Need an ID please
- Thread starter MrBlakcIS300
- Start date
Well I bougt the 135g yesterday for $100. Needs a really good cleaning though, but overall in pretty good shape. If I can get a good deal on the 170g I'll probably buy that too.
This may help in the future: alligator gar has a shorter snout than other gars; if you look at the distance from back of gill cover to eye, it is longer than distance from eye to tip of snout. In all other (US) gars the eye-to-snout distance is as long as or longer than the eye-to-gill-cover distance (I'm not sure about Cuban and Central American gars, thus the disclaimer). The alligator gar also has a proportionately broader snout, more like an actual gator's mouth.
Noto;2440555; said:
Snout to head length does not always work for captive fish. I've examined several captive Florida / spotted gars where the snout was within Alligator gar proportions according to this.
Noto;2445797; said:
best bet is to use the photo ID keys which are readily available online for all species of gars, including both juvenile and adult stages. given these resources nearly everyone should be able to ID the gars they have or see in the LFS or even public aquaria.
some reliable keys:
www.primitivefishes.com (go to the gar section)
the gar key v.2.0 on AP
most common gar species in LFS is the Florida gar; other commonly encountered species are longnose and alligator gars, respectively; somewhat less frequently seen are shortnose gars.
tropical and Cuban gars are quite rare in the hobby, although the former has become a bit more available in the past 3 years (decent supply, limited number of vendors). spotted gars are actually rarely seen in LFS as well--
--solomon
